'Makandiwa, Angel are money hungry cheats,' says Harare cleric

A Harare pastor has attacked celebrated prophets Emmanuel Makandiwa and Uebert Angel branding them cheats who are playing "Nigerian games" with their followers.

Godwin Chitsinde, the leader of a Harare-based church, the Spoken Word Ministries, on Sunday said the pair were only after money. Prophet Angel was a penniless man in the UK a few years ago but is now fabulously wealthy.

Sources who attended Chitsinde's Sunday church service in Belvedere said the sermon was a no-holds-barred show as the man of the cloth dressed down his own.

Chitsinde told NewsDay yesterday he had no regrets over his message and threatened to expose what he termed a "new wave of prosperity gospel preachers" if they dared to sue him over his remarks.

"This rising-up of prophets shows a pattern of people who get into the ministry for money after observing how others have had a mixture of fame and fortune, having made lots of money.

"It is very unfortunate that when you look at people like Angel, they use trickery to detect people's phone numbers. These are Nigerian games," Chitsinde said.

He challenged the media to probe how people who attended church programmes led by the prophets ended up having money miraculously credited into their accounts.

This was in apparent reference to a recent programme held in Botswana where 34-year-old Angel astonished people when they received money in their pockets, hands and bank accounts.

"There is no God who operates like that because these are old Nigerian tactics to rob people of their cash. That was a stage-managed act just like TB Joshua's. The only difference is that TB Joshua is more sophisticated and smarter: If God wants to bless you, He uses people. There needs to be an investigation to establish where the money that people received came from. From which accounts did the money come? This is nonsense, rubbish," said the cleric.

He said it could not be ruled out that some prosperity preachers were using juju and misleading people in the process and implored the media to unearth the truth.

"All this is sinister. That is why you see money changing into leaves. This is a result of questionable prophecies. The media must be committed to expose these things. You need to interview these prophets and see if you can establish their credibility," Chitsinde said.

Sometime last year, a woman, Tambudzai Precious Chinyaka, who identified herself as a member of Makandiwa's UFIC, bought goods worth almost $500 with money that reportedly changed into avocado leaves once it got into the till operator's hands in Mabvuku suburb in Harare.

"I am equally shocked. I don't do juju. I go to the UFI Church and I was shocked to see that the money had turned into leaves. I do not know what happened," Chinyaka was later quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, both Makandiwa's spokesperson Prime Kufakunesu and Angel's Josephine Toro could not be reached for comment yesterday.